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It is not fickle, but because it has mothered not only men, but races, and cradles not only cities, but civilizations – and seen them die, and seen new ones born again – Africa can be dispassionate, indifferent, warm, or cynical, replete with the weariness of too much wisdom.

Beryl Markham

A map says to you. Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not… I am the earth in the palm of your hand.
BERYL MARKHAM

Doubt Hands Maps
What a child does not know and does not want to know of race and colour and class, he learns soon enough as he grows to see each man flipped inexorably into some predestined groove like a penny or a sovereign in a banker’s rack. Kibii, the Nandi boy, was my good friend.
BERYL MARKHAM

Boys Children Friends Good
I look at my yesterdays for months past, and find them as good a lot of yesterdays as anybody might want. I sit there in the firelight and see them all.
BERYL MARKHAM

Friend Good Responsibility Wall
There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work.
BERYL MARKHAM

Children Gay Lifeless Men
A lovely horse is always an experience…. It is an emotional experience of the kind that is spoiled by words.
BERYL MARKHAM

Cowboy Emotional Horse
No human pursuit achieves dignity unless it can be called work, and when you can experience a physical loneliness for the tools of your trade, you see that the other things – the experiments, the irrelevant vocations, the vanities you used to hold – were false to you.
BERYL MARKHAM

Loneliness Tools Vanity
Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance. The cloud clears as you enter it. I have learned this, but like everyone, I learned it late.
BERYL MARKHAM

Clouds Distance Years
But the soul of Africa, its integrity, the slow inexorable pulse of its life, is its own and of such singular rhythm that no outsider, unless steeped from childhood in its endless.
BERYL MARKHAM

Integrity Knowing Nothing War
The abhorrence of loneliness is as natural as wanting to live at all.
BERYL MARKHAM

Cards Deck Loneliness Natural
She has a derelict quality in her character; she toys with freedom and hints at liberation, but yields her own desires gently.
BERYL MARKHAM

Character Freedom Gently Liberation
[The lion] began to contemplate me with a kind of quiet premeditation, like that of a slow-witted man fondling an unaccustomed thought.
BERYL MARKHAM

Kind Lions Men Unaccustomed
I have a trunk containing continents.
BERYL MARKHAM

Containing Continents Trunks
Africa is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering inferno; it is a photographer’s paradise, a hunter’s Valhalla, an escapist’s Utopia. It is what you will, and it withstands all interpretations.
BERYL MARKHAM

Home Justice People
That’s what makes death so hard–unsatisfied curiosity
BERYL MARKHAM

Curiosity Hard Unsatisfied
Success feeds confidence.
BERYL MARKHAM

Confidence Feeds Success
Harmony comes gradually to a pilot and his plane. The wing does not want so much to fly true as to tug at the hands that guide it; the ship would rather hunt the wind than lay her nose to the horizon far ahead.
BERYL MARKHAM

Character Hands Yield

It is not fickle, but because it has mothered not only men, but races, and cradles not only cities, but civilizations – and seen them die, and seen new ones born again – Africa can be dispassionate, indifferent, warm, or cynical, replete with the weariness of too much wisdom.

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It is not fickle, but because it has mothered not only men, but races, and cradles not only cities, but civilizations – and seen them die, and seen new ones born again – Africa can be dispassionate, indifferent, warm, or cynical, replete with the weariness of too much wisdom.

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Popular Authors

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